Under President Trump, ICE has seared itself into the public consciousness for its sweeping attitude toward migrants. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the administration’s hardline approach than the growing size of its detention population. Official statistics I obtained through a FOIA request reveal that, on average, 42,188 people were detained by ICE during the 2018 fiscal year, breaking the government’s previous high set one year earlier. Known as the average daily population (ADP), ICE’s daily running tally shifts remarkably from month to month. In June 2018, for example, the agency [...]
Misplaced private prison outrage at financial industry’s step away
Private prison corporations have done well under the Obama and Trump administrations, but not without a shortage of criticism. Amidst the latest push by migrants’ advocates to limit the business of human confinement, Bank of America announced this week that it will roll back its involvement with the industry that operates much of the nation’s immigration prison system. For decades, private prison corporations have relied mightily on mainstream financial institutions to operate their prison estates. “Despite their substantial coffers, private prison corporations can’t operate without [...]
In Arizona immigration prison, someone enters segregation every 10 days
Arizona’s Eloy Detention Center, where private prison corporation CoreCivic holds about 1,400 of ICE’s immigration prisoners, used solitary confinement fifty times in a recent 17-month period, government records show. In response to a FOIA request, I obtained ICE logs of every instance in which someone was placed in segregation at the isolated prison from September 2017 to February 2019. The records paint the picture of a facility that uses segregation to punish people who violate rules or when there aren’t enough resources to help the people locked up. “Approaching Eloy after sunset, there [...]
Criminalizing humanitarianism
President Trump claims his administration’s heavy-handed immigration policies make us safer. But a criminal trial in Arizona this week shows that, in the Trump era, safety has lost its meaning. Federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against activist Scott Daniel Warren for doing nothing more than giving food, water, and shelter to migrants trekking through the desert. The stakes are high for Warren and for everyone concerned about unrestrained border policing. Since the days of Trump’s first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department has feverishly pursued migrants. [...]
Immigration detainer panel live today
Join a live conversation about one of the most pressing features of immigration policing today: immigration detainers. Kate Evans, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Idaho; Mark Silverstein, Legal Director of the ACLU of Colorado; and my colleague Christopher N. Lasch, Professor of Law at the University of Denver will be speaking at the University of Denver College of Law at 12:00 p.m. MST today. Their panel, Upending Local Immigration Imprisonment: Immigration Detainer Challenges, is part of the Crimmigration Law & Policy Event Series at the University of Denver. The event [...]
Pentagon border wall money relies on untested law
Yesterday, the Defense Department announced it would make available up to $1 billion for President Trump’s border wall project. Despite the president’s heavily publicized national-emergency declaration last month, yesterday’s Pentagon statement does not rely on that contested authority. Instead, Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan pointed to a preexisting statute aimed at curtailing illicit drug trafficking. The transfer of Defense Department funds will help the Department of Homeland Security build 57 miles of 18-foot high fencing, construct and improve roads, and install lighting [...]
Reporting on Migration from Obama to Trump
Read any news website, open any newspaper, or tune into any radio station and migration will soon make an appearance. Without journalists speaking to migrants and challenging official accounts, few people could keep track of the latest developments in the story of human mobility. Reporting on Migration from Obama to Trump, part of the Crimmigration Law & Policy Event Series, brings five of the nation’s leading immigration reporters to the University of Denver to share the challenges and possibilities that come with covering this politically controversial, all-important topic. At [...]
Supreme Court expands ICE detention power
In a split decision released today, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a broad reading of federal statutes authorizing ICE to detain people. The Court’s reasoning in Nielsen v. Preap, No. 16-1363, slip op. (U.S. March 19, 2019), requires ICE to arrest people with certain criminal histories and keep them locked up while immigration judges review their right to remain in the United States. Federal law, five justices concluded, does not exempt people who have been living in the community, even if they have done so for years without incident since release from criminal custody. The Court’s opinion [...]